This 16th century classic was written by sir Thomas Wilson, English diplomat, judge and privy councillor in the Government of Elizabeth I. The Arte of Rhetorique is one of the earliest systematic works on rhetoric written in English.

This book offers a fresh and accessible approach to Bible study. Divine Symmetries engages thoughtful readers by revealing the astonishing symmetrical patternings and shaping techniques of the biblical writers. It invites the Bible to speak on its own terms, offering the key to remembering and interpreting Scripture. It asks and answers these questions: How did the oral world communicate? With what mnemonic conventions was Scripture conveyed in a largely oral world, and can those methods still be effective? The Bible was fashioned for the ear using popular symmetrical patterns and rhetorical devices that helped listeners remember without a ready "text" for reference. These astonishing literary "shapes" are both mnemonic devices and interpretative aids. They offer ideal paradigms for teaching the books, yet they have remained largely dormant under the guise of an alien medium--the printed page. This book offers a captivating and highly visual approach that represents the cutting edge of contemporary biblical study.

Throughout the European Renaissance, authors famous and obscure debated the nature, goals, and value of rhetoric. In a host of treatises, handbooks, letters, and orations, written in both Latin and the vernacular, they attempted to assess the central role that rhetoric clearly played in their culture. Was rhetoric a valuable tool of legitimation for rulers or a dangerous instrument of resistance to political and religious authority? Would its employment maintain the social hierarchy or foster social mobility? Was rhetoric merely the art of lies or was it a means to arrive at the only form of truth available to human beings? In this fascinating volume, Wayne A. Rebhorn enables modern-day readers to follow Renaissance thinkers as they struggle with these and other crucial questions about rhetoric. Arranged chronologically, the twenty-five selections in this anthology, most of which have never before appeared in English, include key texts by Petrarch, Valla, Erasmus, Vives, Melanchthon, Ramus, Wilson, Amyot, and Bacon. All the selections have been fully annotated and have headnotes providing essential background information. In addition, the volume features a biographical glossary of frequently mentioned historical and mythological figures, a comprehensive index, and a detailed bibliography.

Emerging in the 1850s, elocutionists recited poetry or drama with music to create a new type of performance. The genre--dominated by women--achieved remarkable popularity. Yet the elocutionists and their art fell into total obscurity during the twentieth century. Marian Wilson Kimber restores elocution with music to its rightful place in performance history. Gazing through the lenses of gender and genre, Wilson Kimber argues that these female artists transgressed the previous boundaries between private and public domains. Their performances advocated for female agency while also contributing to a new social construction of gender. Elocutionists, proud purveyors of wholesome entertainment, pointedly contrasted their "acceptable" feminine attributes against those of morally suspect actresses. As Wilson Kimber shows, their influence far outlived their heyday. Women, the primary composers of melodramatic compositions, did nothing less than create a tradition that helped shape the history of American music.